Do you want to see a movie that makes you wish you were a kid again? Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium is the film to see if you do.

Read the rest of this entry »

What will you do when you have your midlife crisis? The members of the suburban Wild Hogs "gang" decided to take a motorcycle road trip from Cincinnati, Ohio, to the U.S. Pacific coast.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cloverfield is much more than a monster movie, Godzilla style. It's what you might see if you if you picked up a video camera that someone was holding throughout the events that took place.

I really enjoyed this movie, even though I found one major flaw in it. There is no way in hell that the monster could have lived after being the target of missiles and bombs. That ammo is designed to go through steel and I'd don't think any living creature has a hide that strong.

The monster wasn't the scariest part of the movie. He was just lumbering around, destroying things, and eating random people on the fly. The scariest part were the critters falling off its body. I don't know what the critters were doing to the people, but it didn't look like they were playing. Thankfully, we didn't see anyone getting chomped on.

If you want realism in a horror flick, I highly recommend you watch Cloverfield.

It stars Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, T.J. Miller, Michael Stahl-David, Mike Vogel and Odette Yustman. Here's a 5-minute clip from the movie:

My son persuaded me to watch The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising with him. It was a load of crap, in my humble opinion.

Will Stanton, on his 14th birthday, finds out he is "the seeker" and has to collect 6 signs before "the rider" unleashes darkness on the world.

What the movie failed to explain, until near the end, is why Will was the seeker in the first place and why things didn't start happening until he was 14.

Judging by the reviews at IMDB and comparing the movie with the plot of the book series started over 40 years ago, I think I'm correct in my opinion that this movie isn't worth the time to watch it.

The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising stars Alexander Ludwig, Christopher Eccleston and a bunch of other forgettable actors. Here's a trailer:

The Da Vinci Code is an excellent film. The religious content could be replaced with just about anything else and it would still be entertaining. I know a lot of people wouldn't agree with me, but I don't care. This movie (and the book it was based on) isn't about religion; it's about power and the people who use power to suppress information that shouldn't be suppressed.

In this story, Professor Langdon is lured into a treasure hunt for the most valuable treasure in the world: The Holy Grail. It wasn't his choice — the French government, along with some powerful people in the Catholic church, implicated him in murder. Anyway, this is as far as I'll go with it, lest I spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

The Da Vinci Code stars Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Paul Bettany and Alfred Molina. Here's a clip of the final scenes in the movie with some awesome background music.

Shrek is the animated feature that set a new standard for CGI-driven animated movies. It won an Oscar in 2002 for "Best Animated Feature", as well as other awards and a whole slew of nominations.

In this film, Shrek gets invaded by fairly tale creatures after Lord Farquaad banishes them from the kingdom of Duloc. To fix the problem, Shrek sets out to rescue Princess Fiona from a fiery dragon so that she can wed Lord Farquaad. Along the way, he picks up an unwanted companion (Donkey). On the way back, he falls in love with Princess Fiona, who turns into an ogre herself during the night. The rest of the story is animation history.

Shrek stars the voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, John Lithgow and many, many more. Here's the trailer:

The "runt" stole the show in Chicken Little. I laughed so hard at some of the routines, I cant believe this didn't get better ratings. I'm not telling any more than "the sky is falling". You have to watch it to enjoy it as much as I did.

Chicken Little stars the voices of Zach Braff, Garry Marshall, Don Knotts, Patrick Stewart, and many others. Here are a couple of teasers/trailers. Have fun!

While I enjoyed the action and some of the craziness of The 6th Day, I couldn't get my head wrapped around the basic premise. Oh, I enjoyed watching it as I enjoy watching most of "Ahnold's" films, but the underlying theme of cloning doesn't make sense to me. The writers made the assumption that copying memories and DNA, and putting them in "blanks" that are ready to be altered, is enough. The story assumes that humans don't have immortal souls at all. It crossed some religious boundaries that didn't need to be crossed. I think it could have been written in a way where that wouldn't have been an issue at all.

The 6th Day stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Rapaport, Tony Goldwyn and others. Here's the trailer:

From the same people (and starring some of the same actors) that brought you "Shaun of the Dead" (which I haven't written about yet), this is "Hot Fuzz".

Simon Pegg does a great job as a police officer reassigned from London to a small village because he's making everyone else in his department look bad. I don't know if you'd call it "deadpan" acting, but he played the part fairly straight and it just made it all that much funnier. Never mind that it's a murder mystery as well as a comedy. The last 15 minutes or so had me laughing so hard my sides ached.

Hot Fuzz stars Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and a whole slew of others. Here's the trailer:

I whipped out Jerry Maguire in July and watched it with my son, who had never seen it before. I had the VHS tape copied to DVD a couple of years ago, but I hadn't watched it since the day I bought it.

Responsible for "show me the money", "you had me at hello" and "you complete me" becoming part of the American culture, it won a whole slew of awards for both the film and the actors involved.

Jerry Maguire stars Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr. (who won an Oscar) and Renée Zellweger, with some notable appearances by Beau Bridges and Jerry O'Connell. Instead of presenting you with a trailer, I'm going to present a National Geographic slideshow that uses Bruce Springsteen's "Jerry Maguire" version of "Secret Garden" as the music. I heard this quite a few times before I ever saw the movie: